A slow labour

The Great Belt fixed link stretches for a total of 18 kilometres. The suspension bridge has a span of 1,624 metres and is held up by 254 metre-high pylons 67 metres above water.
Before Parliament decided to build a link across the Great Belt in 1986, a long list of…

The Great Belt fixed link stretches for a total of 18 kilometres. The suspension bridge has a span of 1,624 metres and is held up by 254 metre-high pylons 67 metres above water.
Before Parliament decided to build a link across the Great Belt in 1986, a long list of suggestions, commissions and projects had been involved. Three Danish engineering companies had already submitted proposals in back in 1936-37. The Great Belt Bridge and Øresund Bridge were to be linked to a national motorway network. In 1948, a Great Belt commission was convened. In 1973, the Statsbroen Storebælt agency was established. But the decision to build a fixed link was not actually passed until 1986.

Going for gold

When work on the Great Belt fixed link's east bridge began in 1987, at 1,624 metres, the span of the suspension bridge over Østerrenden was set to break the world record. Sadly, the record attempt was dead in the water. In 1988, the Japanese began work on the Akashi-Kaikyo suspension bridge. The bridge was shorter than the Great Belt link but its span measured 1,991 metres. The Japanese bridge was opened three months before the Great Belt Bridge, which had to make do with second place. If Denmark had got its bridge off the ground quicker, it would have won the race. The Statsbroen Storebælt agency had been established back in 1973. Its aim was to build the bridge, but state cutbacks closed the agency down in 1978. By 1986 state finances had improved and the bill for the bridge was passed.